Collating and binding systems for saddle stitchers are well known in the printing industry for mass producing booklets, magazines, catalogues, advertising brochures and the like. Typically, one or more sharply folded and generally pre-printed blanks or signatures are selectively and sequentially fed by a number of spaced signature feeders. The signatures are delivered such that the folded margins or spines of the signatures come to rest upon a collating conveyor line or chain which travels past the signature feeders. The conveyor gathers the signatures, one on top of the other, and moves them, through one or more on-line printing stations, to a stitching or binding station. The assembled signatures then are usually diverted to a trimming station and further led to a labeling station where mailing labels which are pre-printed or printed on-line are affixed.
Prior art systems of this type contemplate the computer controlled production of various demographic editions of books or catalogues of internal and external signatures containing individually tailored information or customized printing on selected signatures. This flexibility is important in satisfying the demands of a particular market or geographical destination. For instance, it may be desirable to offer certain customers or subscribers various features or selected advertising depending upon their special interest, income or occupation. Likewise, it may be relevant to customize products or services contingent upon a customer,s previous buying history. For example, a publication may issue one demo edition for parents of newborn children who have purchased baby products, another edition for farmers interested in the latest milking machines and still another edition for recent purchasers of exercise equipment. In each situation, a publisher may utilize various modes of customization such as blown-in card feeding, invoicing, advertising material insertion, renewal notices and tipping, as well as several types of contact or contactless printing.
To provide these demographic versions, the prior art commonly employs an infcrmation source which indicates the special interest of each subscriber within a common postal locale. Based on the information source, a controller selectively actuates the signature feeders to deliver certain signatures upon the conveyor to form one or more individualized editions of a booklet or magazine for each subscriber within the zip code area. Information in the source is generally arranged in sequential order so that the formed booklets or magazines leave the conveyor ready to be sorted into groups which qualify for postal rate discounts. As part of the collation process, the signatures are conveyed past one or more customizing stations typically including a label head, card inserter, and/or dot matrix ink jet print heads mounted in predetermined relation to a support for the signatures. Examples of such systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,819,173 issued June 25, 1974 to Anderson et.al., and 4,121,818 issued Oct. 24, 1978 to Riley et.al.
In some instances, a mechanism for disposing a particular signature for personalization is also provided. One example of this type of demographic bindery system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,395,031 issued to Gruber et.al. on July 26, 1983. In this arrangement, a plate-like member downstream of the conveyor cooperates with the conveyor chain and an elongated guide member (wire) extending between a signature feeder and the plate-like member to move a page out of superpositioned relationship with a signature delivered to the conveyor just prior to delivery of the selected signature. This opens the books of signatures at the signature selected for opening by the guide member to expose an inside page or internal signature for personalization by a dot matrix printer. Various combinations of plate-like members, guide members, and printers are disclosed to enable customized printing of various internal and external signatures in a book being collated.
It is desirable that magazines be packaged to take maximum advantage of postal discounts. For example, bundles of six or more magazines to be sent by second class mail to subscribers having a common 3-digit zipcode prefix are entitled only to the basic or highest postal rate. However, a bundled group of six or more magazines sent to subscribers having a common 5-digit zipcode obtains a more favorable intermediate postal rate, and grouping six or more magazines sent to subscribers along the same carrier route, qualifies for a lower still postal rate. Accordingly, it is desirable that a bindery build magazines in an order that facilitates presorting and packaging to maximize postal discounts. In this regard, it would be advantageous in some instances if a plurality of different types of magazines could be built during a given production run, to facilitate grouping the various magazines destined for a given carrier route.
Prior art systems are disadvantageous primarily because of inflexibility. For example, even though books may be opened at several internal positions, customization is limited since each book being assembled must be opened at the same fixed pages as dictated by the initial setup of the guide wires and plate-like members. As a result, there is little variance in the type of magazines or books formed during a production run for a given postal zone. Each time a change in the location of customized information is desired, the connection between the plate-like member and signature feeder must be manually reset, restrung at the right position on the plate-like member and with the proper tension to ensure that signatures selected to travel upon the guide wires will do so smoothly without jamming or colliding with other elements of the system. Additional techniques of customizing selected signatures beyond the realm of conventional ink jet printing need to be considered.
Accordingly, it is desirable that the demographic bindery system offer a greater degree of customization, improving upon the selectivity of the signatures to be personalized, and permit totally different magazines to be assembled during a single production run for subscribers in a given postal zone irrespective of varying points of customization.